


a vise to rest your head in

by cracktheglasses (cormallen)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6164173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cormallen/pseuds/cracktheglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Kylo Ren looms above him, masked and robed, immense, blotting out the light in the room. Hux swallows reflexively, heart skittering, and tries to remember how he got here.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	a vise to rest your head in

**Author's Note:**

> Reiterating: dub-con and mind control. 
> 
> Thank you for your invaluable assistance and killing at least half of my semicolons, [Em](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hakuen/pseuds/ughwhyben) and [Sidle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sidleupandsmile/pseuds/sidleupandsmile). And thank you, [caz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cazzy/), for your titling expertise!

Hux is bleeding. He can taste it, salty-sweet, trickling down from his nose, over his lips, down his chin. His shirt collar is stiff with it -- or maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, standing starched to regulation -- he can’t tell anymore. It’s hard to breathe. Sweat is pooling sticky and cold on his collarbone, the back of his neck. His hands are trembling in the cuffs; he thinks there is more blood on his fingers, on his wrists rubbed raw where they strain against the durasteel.

“Again,” Kylo Ren says, his gloved hand cradling his cheek, rubbing over his cheekbone, his temple. Ren’s long fingers scratch up through his hair; he burns everywhere they grip into his skull.

The DH-23 blaster pistol, he thinks desperately, pushing back against the ruthless leather grip, also known as the Outback, can fire one hundred shots per pack, double the capacity of the DC-17, but sacrificing a third of the range. The DC-15 sidearm holds two-fifty, but is only useful in close quarters, close, the pale face jumping, shaking in front of him, mouth gaping wide, the blue bursts of charged plasma slamming, one by one, into the undefended flesh, burning --

“No,” Ren says, hand sliding to the back of his neck, thumb probing into the vulnerable spot at the top of his spine. His voice inside the mask is edged with sharp metal. “You can do better than that. Again.”

His heart is pounding, trapped inside the cage of his ribs.

He licks at the blood crusting above his upper lip, stares up at Ren’s impassive black metal face, almost close enough to touch if only his hands were free, and tries to focus on how he got here.

“This will be easier on you if I restrain you,” Ren said. He wasn’t wearing the gloves or the mask then, not yet, face bare and a little tired as he rummaged through his old, beat-up footlocker. “Real restraints. Something you can see and touch. Here -- try these.”

He held the cuffs out to Hux like it was a favor, a courtesy he was doing him. Why not put me right on the rack, then, if it’s that much easier, Hux wondered, and Ren frowned, eyebrows sharply drawing together.

“Of course, it would be that much easier. Torture always is. Divides you neatly into you and them, honest, no tricks. Do you really think it’s torture you need to fear?”

“We’ve all had training for it. Torture, truth serums -- “

“It’s nothing like a truth serum,” Ren said, but that was later.

Before that, they had been on the shuttle, bound for Ziost. And earlier still, Ren had been a line of heat against his back, one hand heavy on Hux’s hip, the pads of his fingers idly stroking the jut of bone there.

“Do you trust me?” he’d asked, and Hux had said, “No,” immediately, barely needing to think about it. Ren had rolled over, looming over him, eyes wide and dark. “Good,” he’d said, and leaned down, kissed him quickly on the mouth, close-lipped. “Good.”

“No,” Ren says now, mechanical voice warped and low. “Try again. Don’t focus on that. Never focus on how they caught you, it puts too much of you out in the open.”

“You would know all about that,” Hux says out loud, but it’s weak, not the barb he intends it to be. Ren doesn’t rise to it in his usual manner, his presence in Hux’s head as steadily invasive as before.

“What should I think about, then?” Hux asks, trying to push back at him; it’s like pushing against a permacrete wall. Ren feels enormous inside his awareness, no longer just a whisper in the back of his mind, but an overwhelming, smothering mass, pressing against too many of his tender, vulnerable parts. He tries to ignore the fingers stretching, unfurling like tentacles, reaching everywhere in between.

“Do I focus on inconsequential nonsense? Gossip from the officers’ mess? The times tables? Do I count breaths?”

“You can,” Ren nods, the light breaking against the deep scarred black of the mask. “Taking apart the blasters, that was good, but not inconsequential enough. Apparently, you can’t think of close combat without opening the door to -- who was he? He made the most betrayed little choking noise as you shot him.”

Hux can’t help it -- Ren’s words slither right along to the memory, the path winding and crooking between the pieces of him, the defenses in the way crumpling like flimsies. Ren fingers through them, discarding whatever he deems uninteresting, until he reaches what he wants, his leather-gloved grip closing around it. It feels less like a normal remembering -- not that he ruminates on this as often as Ren seems to think -- and more like watching a holo, the marks from his teeth scoring the pillow shoved under his head, spit and blood staining down from his broken mouth. Korin’s hands in his hair, pulling, the weight of him over Hux’s back. Ren eels his way ahead, to the part where Hux is between Korin’s legs in his narrow cadet’s bunk, and then to the deserted hallway, the astonished look on Korin’s face, his gaping lips, the blaster bolt hitting him square in the chest.

“Nobody knew,” Ren says; it’s not a question, yet he continues like he wants the confirmation. “It stayed an accident. You had to repeat the safety training.” Hux feels him pull back at that, but not too far. When he speaks again, Hux cannot tell if he is shaping the words with his mouth or with his mind. He blinks, trying to clear his vision, his eyes picking out Ren’s arm, his shoulder, a few strands of thick black hair curling loose from under the side of his mask.

“I didn’t mean that you consciously think of it. Only that certain stimuli make it more likely to move to the forefront. It’s why some people try to play dejarik in their heads. Holochess. Pazaak. It could be a useful strategy for you, for a time. Then again, strategy is all you think about; chess may still be too revealing.”

Ren leans back and peels off one of his gloves, the wadded up black shape of it landing somewhere on the edge of Hux’s sight. When he touches Hux’s face again, it’s with bare skin, the roughened fingertips of his sword hand.

“No matter the strategy, you can only keep it up for so long. The best thing to do is to let them believe they’ve finally found something, after you’ve made them work for it. Something hidden, something personal, but not too personal.”

It’s this, somehow, that sets him off, more than Ren’s overconfident, greedy pawing through his innards. _They_. Whoever _they_ are supposed to be, the only one prodding inside his mind right now is Kylo Ren, and if he is in the position to be interrogated like this by anyone else, then it won’t matter what personal, but not too personal confessions he makes them work for. He can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in the galaxy who could do this to him, and chances are, if it isn’t Ren, then the Resistance has him, and all that awaits him is a blaster bolt to the back of the head, if he’s lucky. A very public blaster bolt, if he is less so.

Ren’s thumb is sliding down, the pad of it rubbing across his bottom lip, before his other hand moves suddenly to push his chin up, thick fingers cupping his jaw and squeezing none too lightly. It takes him a moment to realize Ren is cleaning the blood from his face with his discarded glove, swiping it up from his mouth, his chin, where it has dripped from his nose. It’s possible, Hux thinks, face to face with the eye slits in the black plasteel, that Ren is doing all of this simply because he enjoys tormenting him, enjoys being allowed this close, this deep, and is taking advantage of Hux’s misplaced, misguided hospitality.

Ren chuckles. Hux knows that must be inside his head, because Ren’s laugh when filtered through his mask is a grating, unpleasant sound, like nails scraping glass, though the sound of it now, echoing mockingly off the inside of his skull, isn’t much better. Behind the derisive laughter, a thought begins to form, needling in his temple, that perhaps Ren isn’t doing this only for his own benefit. It’s possible the Supreme Leader has set him to this, a test of him, of Ren, or of them both -- and on the back of this one, another thought, fearful, insidious: what value has he now, after the failure of everything he had worked for, to be worth a test?

“Really, Hux,” Ren says, patronizing, his insight as unwelcome now as it has been so far. “Tell me, are you thinking this because you are truly afraid, or because I made you think it?”

 _You can do that_. _You can do that_? he thinks, throat going tight, and Ren nods.

“I can. I wouldn’t usually be so subtle about it.”

“This is subtle?” Hux asks, and feels the burst of Ren’s anger behind his brow bone, a fresh bloom of pain that makes him screw his eyes tightly shut, bile rising to his throat.

“We’re wasting time,” Ren says, this time definitely out loud. “Try again.”

Hux is bleeding again, the insides of his wrists sore, skin scraped into raw mess by the thick durasteel cuffs. It is one pain among many. His throat feels hoarse, tender; his temple pulses in short angry throbs, like someone is driving a needle into the bone of his skull. Kylo Ren looms above him, masked and robed, immense, blotting out the light in the room. Hux swallows reflexively, heart skittering, and tries to remember how he ended up like this.

They were on a shuttle bound for Ziost, he is certain of it, of plotting the course into the navicomputer, ten standard days separating him from whatever he was to face. _You will come to me with Kylo Ren_ , Supreme Leader Snoke had said, the hologram’s eyes fixing on him, empty, unblinking, as if seeing right through to the very core of him, small and angry and trembling.

He had been in bed with Ren, he is certain of that as well, Ren’s hands spanning his ribs, pulling Hux back against his too-warm wide chest. Ren’s mouth at his ear, whispering, _it’s too soon; we are not ready_ \--

“What did I say about not thinking how you got here?” Ren snaps, loud enough for the feedback to buzz through the mask, and then he is pushing through Hux’s mind, rough, heavy, without finesse, hard enough that the edges of Hux’s vision go black, ragged, the needle in his temple pulsing quicker, deeper.

He scrambles for the pawn, slides it into D-4 with shaking fingers, haphazardly sets the rest of the white figures on the board. There isn’t anyone to play the black, so he moves their Queen’s pawn to D-5, this a bit more familiar. King’s pawn to E-3, the bishop to D-3; the nanny droid isn’t programmed to help him with this, so he has to move for the black again, tongue stuck out in concentration as he lies on his stomach in the green garden grass. Black knight to F-6; he isn’t supposed to be in the garden, but nobody will tell him to go back inside, not today, so he moves another pawn to F-4, and nudges impatiently at the black bishop. The garden had been planted for his mother, and she isn’t going to be there, not again, not anymore, and he blinks dry eyes, moves the white knight to to F-3 when suddenly Ren is there, snatching the black rook out of his hands. Hux watches him swap the rook for the king, his dark hulking shape incongruous, out of place on the sunny lawn, the delicate purple leaves of the bachani plant crushing, caught under his boot.

“She brought it with her from Telos,” Ren says, plucking a bloom from the vine, squeezing the petals between his fingers. The dark juice runs down his wrist, staining the nail bed, the heel of his hand, and Hux can smell it, the sharp, spicy scent, warm and familiar, going rotten and stale at Ren’s touch.

“It wouldn’t grow here,” Ren continues wistfully, tearing off another flower, a piece of the stem still hanging onto this one as he worries at the petals, one by one. “It needed special soil, and the air was too dry, and there was no one left to tend to it after you went off to the academy.” He winds the remaining stem around the black king’s middle, the petals gone, the empty calyx splayed out over the lacquered wooden face.

“Get out,” Hux whispers, a bitter lump caught in his throat, “get out, get out,” and then he is pulling at the ill-fitting seams of his cadet’s uniform jacket, the academy transport descending into the thick scraps of fog. He stares out of the cold triple-paned window, the grey Arkanian rain falling in sheets over the landing strip. He clutches his sole bag in his hands, all he is allowed just like the others, and it rankles, the other recruits whispering something behind him, the hushed, barely concealed laughter at his back as they get ready to disembark. Ren offers him a cold arm on the landing ramp, his sleeve soaked through; heavy rain droplets are sliding down the faceplate of his mask, leaving glistening silver trails before they disappear under his high collar.

“You hated it here. You missed the sunshine,” Ren says, shivering his wet shoulders. “When did you stop missing it, I wonder?”

“Don’t,” Hux tells him, clutching onto the frigid wool of his arm, the water sluicing over his fingers. “Ren, please,” he tries, ashamed at the pathetic, begging notes in his voice, and then he is blinking his eyes owlishly, his real eyes, his cabin coming into sharp focus all around him.

“Shh,” Ren says gently; Hux feels his warm breath huffing over his ear. It feels alien, wrong, until he realizes Ren has taken the mask off, along with his remaining glove, and his fingers are working to open the cuffs. His hands, at least, are careful, and Hux wants to ask if they’re done, then, if Ren is finally going to leave him alone, but Ren is still spidering through Hux’s insides even as he’s undoing the buttons on his collar, pulling his bloodstained shirt off, sliding his irrevocably crumpled trousers down his legs.

He watches Ren undress the rest of the way, his robes pooling down like a black stain on the polished durasteel floor, and then Ren is climbing up onto the narrow regulation mattress, crowding the rest of him with his scarred, naked flesh, deceptive warmth coming off of him in waves.

Ren always runs too hot. Sometimes, Hux even likes it, but he has had enough of Ren today -- tonight? he has no idea how much time has passed, and he doubts Ren will tell him -- to last him a lifetime.

“We are not done yet,” Ren says, manhandling him up onto all fours. Hux feels his hands curl around his hipbones, a palm sliding down, smoothing over his thigh, and then Ren’s cock is riding the crease of his ass, hot and trailing wet over his skin. Hux sobs. He has never felt this open, this weak. He has no words for the shame of it, and Ren doesn’t need them in any case, not when he can see everything, know everything, take everything.

Ren is sucking two fingers into his mouth; even with his face buried in the pillows, somehow Hux knows it anyway, can see it clearly in his mind’s eye, Ren tonguing them, getting them slick with spit, and then suddenly they’re pushing into him. He can see that, too, can see himself being stretched apart as Ren opens him up, his fingers fanning out, getting him loose and messy and wet. Hux pants into the pillow, his breath hot and humid, trapped in the cloth, and doesn’t know what’s worse, the feel of Ren in his body or in his head, that he’s about to take Ren’s cock or that Ren is making him see what he sees, his hand withdrawing, the thick head of his cock nudging up against Hux’s hole.

Ren grunts and pushes his thighs further apart, one large hand still gripping on to his hip, and then his dick is stretching Hux open. It’s the strangest kind of hurt, Hux thinks, something that has no right to feel good at all, but somehow it does; Ren keeps pushing, steady and deep, until it feels like he is taking up all the space inside him, until there is nothing left but the heavy weight of him, the dark red marks on Hux’s ass, his hip, where Ren is holding him almost too tight. Ren pulls back a little, then slams sharply back in, and then the image is suddenly gone from his mind, replaced by the wall, the headboard in front of him, the mundane crush of the pillow under his cheek.

He feels bereft, somehow, Ren inside him, yet not. He is alone in his head for the first time in what feels like an eon, and it is -- strange, he realizes, strange bordering on uncomfortable. He tries to hold himself still against the push of Ren’s hips, Ren’s other hand coming around his middle to pull him in tighter, but it isn’t right, it isn’t --

“You get used to it,” Ren says, voice ragged and heavy above him. “It feels wrong, not having someone there. You want to let it back in, you _need_ to let it back in, to let it guide you through it.” He takes a deep, panting breath, and thrusts hard, again. “I need you to fight it.”

Ren’s enveloping hands are tugging at him, rearranging him, fitting him better into the heated push-pull of Ren’s dick; he can barely form the words, but Hux still finds it in himself to ask, “Is your scavenger girl truly this powerful?”

“ _My_ scavenger girl?” Ren snaps, like that is the issue, and Hux knows with sudden, terrible clarity that this has nothing to do with her, or with Skywalker, or any other Jedi he may manage to scrounge up.

If not the Jedi, then --

He tries as much as he can to focus on the things he cannot confuse for anything else. The stuttered press of Ren’s hips, the heavy drag of his cock, almost, but not quite exactly where he wants it, imperfect and therefore, purely physical, but Ren is determined to let him have none of it. He nudges at the fringes of Hux’s consciousness, like a fidgety cat rubbing at his legs, and then he is edging his way inside. It’s neither the brutal, graceless charge nor the crawling whisper of earlier; this time, Hux feels the sharp corners of himself smoothing, giving way as Ren settles -- _nests_ \-- in the hollows. As if his mind has made space for Ren already, has adjusted, has shaped, has grown around the intrusion. He wants to be horrified at this profound betrayal by his own grey matter, and yet, when Ren finally stills inside him, content, it is as welcome as it is revolting.

\-- it’s too much -- not enough -- the air is too tight -- he is choking on the --

“Breathe,” Ren says. “In and out. Just like that. Breathe.”

Hux does, because Kylo Ren wants him to.

He inhales. Exhales. Take another breath, and then another. And another.

He is supposed to be fighting Ren; a part of him still knows that -- an increasingly small, quiet part, he notes with with an almost detached curiosity.

“Good,” Ren praises. “That’s good, keep doing that.”

He feels the softest, gentlest press of Ren’s lips on the back of his neck, a silky kiss at the join of vertebrae, and that makes it even harder to take stock of what fighting Ren ought to entail. Somewhere, in the rational, logical piece of General Hux that still remains, he knows it should be remarkably simple, a matter of two elementary choices:

Do what Ren wants. Please him. And fail.

Do the opposite. Disobey Ren. And succeed.

It isn’t simple at all, says the needle in his temple, says the pounding pulse of his heart in his chest, his wrists, his ears. Disobeying Ren means not taking the next breath. Or the breath after that, or the breath after that one.

“Why stop doing what you already want to be doing? In fact, exactly what you were going to do anyway?” Ren asks, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Go on. Breathe. Keep breathing. For me.”

He tries. He knows he tries. He pushes back against Ren as hard as he can manage, twisting, pinned, mind and body, in Ren’s ungiving grip. A red haze is rising up through the cabin floor, the copper and ozone smell of it hitting his nostrils, the thick, overwhelming deluge of it engulfing his arms and legs, running caustic up his skin. It is scalding his chest, his lungs, blurring what remains of his eyesight, eating him up. When it finally stops, when he blinks clear eyes against the bedcovers, when he finally takes a breath that isn’t at Ren’s pleasure, Hux isn’t sure if he has succeeded -- or if Ren has let him.

Ren’s softening cock is still inside him; the ache has long since stopped being pleasant. He feels worn all over, his ass sore and tacky with Ren’s come, cooling, slimy strings of it leaking out as he withdraws. He is careful, but Hux can’t hide his wince, his only satisfaction the thought that Ren feels it as well, his hand briefly lingering on Hux’s hip.

The mattress buckles slightly as Ren gets up; he comes back with a handful of refresher cloths sealed in sterile, tamper-proof packets. Wordlessly, he tears one open and begins to clean Hux up, face, wrists, the insides of his thighs, another humiliation heaped onto the pile. Hux allows it, burning up, eyes closed against the efficient silent touch, the cool sting of disinfectant on his abused skin.

The images come to him without warning, another unbidden, unwanted flood of Ren inside:

 _a sullen, lanky boy with uncombed hair, the too-long fringe dipping into his eyes. He sits cross-legged, bent over a scatter of mechanical parts, the cords a tangle, the metal unwilling to slot together. The dimmed red crystal clutched in his spidery fingers is cracked down the center. As the boy lowers his head, the cracks spread and deepen, become dark slivers crawling up his hands, the shadows feeding through, and all around him, whispers, whispers, the hissing tempo rising into a single voice_ \--

Hux opens his eyes. Kylo Ren is crouched on the mattress, still naked, his scarred, uneven face so deliberately solemn that Hux can’t help it.

“Is that supposed to be my reward?” he asks, feeling his mouth crook into an imitation of a grin despite himself. “Is it meant to put me at ease? Make us even? Tell me, Ren, do you think so highly of your own failures that you must share them with me?”

“No more than you think of yours.”

“I was content to let mine rest until you made me,” Hux says, aware of the petulant, put-upon notes in his voice. In fact, he sounds more like Ren than himself, but if Ren has heard the thought, he gives no indication of it.

“Yes. That’s why we’re doing this. So I can’t make you,” Ren responds, sitting back on his haunches. “Come on, think of it now. How _did_ you get here? I’ll permit it.”

He’d like to refuse on principle, but something in Ren’s tired, resigned voice scrapes at him, catches barbed, stinging hooks inside his chest.

“We were -- we _are_ \-- on the shuttle to Ziost,” he says slowly, considering. On the way to Supreme Leader Snoke’s stronghold, his mind supplies. At Snoke’s summons.

 _I am_ disappointed, _General_ , the Supreme Leader had said, empty black gaze fixed upon him, all-seeing, all-knowing. _You will come to me with Kylo Ren, without delay_. _There will be plenty of time, once you are here, to reflect upon the depths of this failure_. That endless, hologram’s stare had crushed him, had rooted him to the spot, had set him kneeling on the cold floor long after the transmission had ended.

Later, there had been Kylo, stretched out, a long line of heat against his trembling back. Kylo’s bare arm, his pale hand, splayed over his stomach, pulling him close. _We’re not ready_ , Kylo had said, _not by far_.

Kylo had said, _Do you trust me?_

 _No_ , he had said, without hesitation.

Hadn’t he?

Hux has always prided himself on his memory. It’s not photographic, of course, not like the programmed clarity of a droid’s machine receptors, but he’d like to think it’s as close as a human’s can get, his power to recall numerous technical maneuvers and chess openings, the specs of countless ships, the designations of thousands of troopers and staff under his command. It has always been an invaluable tool to him, an ally like no other, and yet he finds he cannot be sure of it now. He can see it so clearly in his mind’s eye, a trusted, much-rewatched holo, Ren’s dark, impatient eyes, the softness of his mouth as he’d kissed him, as he had nodded, approving.

The second memory overlaps the first, twines into it like static, like the bondium weave overlay threading through his combat suit.

 _Yes_ , he had told Kylo. _Yes_. He’d turned his face into Kylo’s shoulder, the fresh scars there still pink and shiny with synthflesh and the remnants of a bacta patch. Kylo had shivered, had recoiled away from the touch, his mouth a harsh line in his long, solemn face.

_You shouldn’t. Please. You know my mind isn’t always my own._

He reaches a hand to Ren’s shoulder now, feels for the thin, stretched tissue of the healing scars.

“Which one is true?”

“You tell me,” Ren shrugs.

He should have known better than to expect a useful answer from Ren, but all the same, Hux wants to shake him, to scream, to dig his nails into his barely-healed flesh until he bleeds. He takes a deep breath instead, and searches Ren’s face for a reaction.

“What was all this supposed to accomplish, then? What did you mean to teach me, that I am beyond defenseless? That my own thoughts are, in fact, a crippling vulnerability, open to be rearranged at will, because some people -- some people have been given more power than they know what to do with? Power, I might add, they hardly deserve, and shouldn’t bloody well have.”

He shuts his mouth with an almost audible snap, teeth clicking roughly, painfully against each other, and Ren cocks his head at him, brows drawn.

“You are not wrong,” Ren says after a long silence. He looks smaller, somehow, in the bright electric light of the cabin, the pink shiny scales of scarring on his shoulder and upper arm limned angry and bright, stretching down almost to the elbow, farther than Hux had thought before. His usually broad shoulders are hunched, his back a compact, bent curve; if Hux didn’t know better, he would think Ren was trying to make himself smaller on purpose. That Ren was -- ashamed? Afraid? He settles on _afraid_ after a moment of deliberation, and Ren shakes his head.

“You should be afraid, too,” Ren says, as if underscoring Hux’s point; he is weak, powerless. Easy to break. “He can take anything from you,” Ren continues. “He can make you do what he wants, and you won’t know it’s not your own will. Or you’ll know, but you’ll still want to obey, even when you know it’s him making you want it. He will look, and he will see, and he will take.”

He sidles up closer, the mattress dipping and shifting under his weight, and gives Hux a long look, unblinking, black and empty. It sends a shudder through the pit of Hux’s stomach, his chest, his hands clenching in dreadful anticipation, but Ren only sighs and mumbles something Hux doesn’t believe he’s understanding quite right.

“What?” he asks, and Ren looks away, then back at him, a bright red flush suddenly suffusing his face, his neck, his bared chest.

“I, uh, am sorry. I didn’t -- earlier, you haven’t -- I didn’t let you finish,” he says, pointing to Hux’s lap.

“What?” Hux says again, dumbly. “Is that _really_ what you’re thinking about right now?”

“Yes,” Ren says, moving almost uncomfortably close. “He thinks it’s-- He doesn’t-- Such thoughts are -- beneath him. My base indulgences. He won’t look very deep, there. Not if he has to look through _that_.”

“I see,” Hux says; he can hardly think of anything he finds less appealing at this very moment than more of Ren’s touch, and yet --

“Fine, then. Indulge,” he says, and sits up against the wall, lets Ren settle, slowly, between his spread thighs.

Whatever else he may be, Kylo Ren is remarkably good at this, wrapping his fingers around Hux’s cock with practiced ease, his lips closing over the head, hot and slippery. Despite everything, Hux gets hard almost instantly at the firm, steady grip, and knows he is going to come embarrassingly quickly if Ren keeps going like this, the rough, heavy hand stroking him in rhythm with his mouth. He arches up into it, shuddering a little at the scrape of Ren’s teeth, the way Ren’s lips stretch around him, the satisfied noise Ren makes as he takes him deeper. He moans even louder when Hux comes, the long line of his throat working as he swallows.

When he pulls off, his mouth is reddened and wet and a little puffy, and he wipes at it gracelessly with the back of his hand.

“We should try again,” he says, the traces of spit still glistening on his chin, and Hux feels the familiar stirring inside his mind, Ren’s presence, uncoiling, stretching its shifting feelers.

No, he wants to say, no more, I can’t. I can’t be like you. I’m just a man; soldier, not sorcerer, infinitely bendable and breakable, open to be reshaped at will.

“Yes, I know,” Ren says, standing up. “That is why I’m here.”

Hux stretches out on the thin mattress, in the warm space Ren has left behind, and wills himself to relax. His head feels heavy, muzzy; a spidery, skittery feeling threading somewhere in the depths of his skull. He takes deep breaths of the recycled air and counts them slowly, one by one.

He is on a shuttle, bound for the Supreme Leader’s stronghold on Ziost, due to arrive in ten -- no, nine days, now. It’s hard to imagine what awaits him there, and so he does not try, thinking instead of Ren, of the way his fingers had slid down his ribs, to the shallow dip of stomach underneath, the way he’d reached out and pulled him in close in Hux’s narrow bed after Snoke’s summons.

 _Do you trust me?_ Hux had asked, and Kylo had answered _Yes_ without even thinking, and he had leaned over and kissed him, quick and close-lipped. Had hidden his face in the hard muscle of Kylo’s shoulder, the fresh scar tissue under his cheek a patchwork of rough and smooth and smelling of leftover bacta.

It would be a pleasant memory if it were real, though indulgent, of course, and utterly foolish. The true recollection is already edging its way to the forefront of his mind, where it belongs, Ren’s face between his thighs, his mouth red and spit-slick, a thick, slimy trickle of it staining the corner. Ren wipes it off with the heel of his hand, his dark angry eyes narrowed.

“To him, you’re just a man,” he says, as derisive and haughty as someone who’s just sucked his cock could sound. “You have to know that I am more valuable, by far.”

“Indeed, Lord Ren,” Hux tells him. “That is, of course, why you are down there.”

He falls asleep not long afterwards, lulled by the counting of breaths, by the soft hum of the engines from deep in the shuttle’s belly, by the skirring whispers, softer still, from somewhere and nowhere all at once.

 

They make the approach to Ziost on the morning of the tenth day, the pale sun tinting the polar ice caps blue in its faded wake.

He meets Kylo Ren in the airlock, glancing quickly at his battered helmet, the fraying hem of his worn-in black robes, and derisively adjusts one of his own starched shirt cuffs. He is almost able to keep the tremble from his fingers as he does so; he thinks the leather of his gloves does a fair enough job of concealing what he cannot.

Ren notices, of course, the masked face swiveling towards him like a particularly awkward droid’s, his own gloved hands folded across his chest.

“Nervous, General?” Ren asks, his mechanical voice filtered low and even through the helmet’s mouthpiece. “General Starkiller. Have you heard them call you that?”

“No,” Hux says, willing the ramp to lower. The shuttle’s autopilot circles the port twice before he feels the slight jar of the landing gear engaging.

“I suppose they don’t do it to your face,” Ren tells him before he turns away. “Relax. I’m certain you have nothing to be nervous about. Trust me.”

He knows Ren means it in mockery rather than in offer, but he can’t help rising to the bait. The retort leaves his mouth without any hesitation, before he’s even had time to think it through.

“Why in the seven kriffing hells would I ever trust you?” he says, as the landing ramp finally lowers with a hydraulic hiss.

He makes sure he walks ahead of Ren as they disembark.

**Author's Note:**

> Come poke me on [tumblr](http://cracktheglasses.tumblr.com/).


End file.
